Hi all,
My wife and I have 529s set up for our children (ages 2 and 3). After careful research, we settled on a Nevada plan through Vanguard, invested in passive index funds. My parents have contributed to these plans in the past at Christmas, etc. Naturally I am very grateful and appreciative that my parents want to contribute to our childrens' education.
This year, they have a new financial advisor who wants to "set up separate 529s that he could monitor," which I interpret to mean "extract fees from." I expect the amounts of money in these accounts to be modest (at most 4 figures), and I'm skeptical that his "monitoring" is in the best interest of anyone except him.
My parents are financially secure by virtue of their good spending habits, but their finances are all over the place. They have a history of creating lots and lots of accounts with small amounts of money in each, based on the advice of past advisors.
I want to show my parents the statistics about actively vs passively managed funds, show them how simple strategies beat the experts. Show them they're being taken for a ride. Show them that this advisor guy isn't acting in the best interest of my parents or my kids. Tell them to kick him to the curb.
But they're my parents. The last thing I want to do is argue with them about how they should give my kids money!
What do, MMM?